Texas Tech University School of Law Forum

[kalvano]

Tech is actually requiring you to do that?

That's funny. You'd think they would want to encourage people to go there.

It's funny when I see you jumping in the Texas Tech threads. Keeping busy over there at SMU?

Let's count how many Tech threads I've jumped into in the past month.

One, tw....well, one.

I just think it's funny that a school with so much competition chooses to do something that makes it more difficult for students to apply instead of less.

[texas man]

Tech is actually requiring you to do that?

That's funny. You'd think they would want to encourage people to go there.

It's funny when I see you jumping in the Texas Tech threads. Keeping busy over there at SMU?

Let's count how many Tech threads I've jumped into in the past month.

One, tw....well, one.

I just think it's funny that a school with so much competition chooses to do something that makes it more difficult for students to apply instead of less.

It's probably that there really aren't many Tech threads - it just seems like any of the ones I look at you've commented on. Also, from what I've seen, the evaluations really don't make it that much more difficult - hope you're enjoying SMU.

[texas man]

I understand that you may have a dog in this fight...

My only dog is trying to get more accurate information about Texas Tech and Lubbock out there. There is a lot of inaccurate info out there about Tech, and I just want people to be able to make a more informed decision when considering the law school. You mentioned a new admissions requirement, and I was curious about it. I actually checked with the admissions office to find out about it - I thought it was strange that they aren't taking letters of recommendation. You were correct about this. They are only taking the evaluations and not the letters. I was told that they are trying it out this year and will see how it goes. I would think that letters would be more informative in the admissions process, but this is what they've decided to do. If it causes trouble for them, I assume they will make changes in the future. As a side note, Texas Tech does not use an index when evaluating applications, so it probably does take longer to go through the them (I believe the other Texas schools use an index, allowing them to "auto-deny" a portion of applications). They might see this as a way to make their process more efficient. We'll see.

On the "quality of education," my only point was that this is a factor (I wasn't suggesting that Tech has a higher quality than any other school) - I actually think most of the schools in Texas have an excellent quality of eduction (I base this on what I have heard from students as well as professors) - Baylor, SMU, Texas Tech, and UH are very reputable. Ironically, I have heard less than stellar things about UT's legal writing program, even though they are undoubtably the most prestigious school in Texas. With Texas Tech, now that I am here, the quality of education has exceeded my expectation (which was already pretty high), and I know I made the right choice in coming here over several other Texas schools.

After that, If anyone wants to work in Texas, I think it's helpful to know where in Texas you want to work. Check employment statistics for the respective counties. In Dallas SMU is clearly on top in terms of raw number of attorneys. In Houston it's UH and South Texas (I think these two schools make up 48% of the attorneys in Harris County). In Austin it's UT, and after that it's pretty even between Baylor, SMU, Tech, and UH. It's also instructive to look at the number of each school's graduates when looking at this data.

One more thing... when you visit the schools you're interested in, visit the career services department for each. It's interesting to see how these staffs differ between the schools.

[dutchtowner]

Tech is actually requiring you to do that?

That's funny. You'd think they would want to encourage people to go there.

It's funny when I see you jumping in the Texas Tech threads. Keeping busy over there at SMU?

Let's count how many Tech threads I've jumped into in the past month.

One, tw....well, one.

I just think it's funny that a school with so much competition chooses to do something that makes it more difficult for students to apply instead of less.

It's probably that there really aren't many Tech threads - it just seems like any of the ones I look at you've commented on. Also, from what I've seen, the evaluations really don't make it that much more difficult - hope you're enjoying SMU.

I have a blogging bud who just started 1L at TT. I was considering applying, but have to agree with the other poster. A law school totally changing it's procedure to receive evaluations and not accept LOR's seems strange at best. I checked LSAC just to confirm and it is true. I wouldn't minimize what prospects go through already just to apply to law school and I would definitely agree that it isn't fair to expect someone who has accumulated LOR's to go to the trouble of securing evaluations from profs who have already gone to the trouble of writing LOR's.

I would hope that there's some exception at TT to the rule; maybe they receive too many quality applicants already?

Cheers!
Dutch